Reopening poses global dilemma
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha announced on June 16 that his government would reopen the country within 120 days, falling in October. To show he is a man of his word, the government last week announced the partial reopening of many businesses and activities. Yesterday, many of the nation’s venues, businesses and activities began their journey on what remains a long road towards a “new normal”.
The reopening was met with an encouraging sign. The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) yesterday reported 11,375 new infections, with 87 fatalities — the first time in the past few months that the fatality rate has dipped below three digit figures.
Thailand and other tourist-dependent nations in the Southeast Asia region now find themselves caught in a dilemma. These nations decided to leave behind their “zero-Covid” policies and started charting a path towards living with the virus — despite experts’ warnings that it may be too early to consider Covid-19, and its ability to mutate into newer, deadlier strains, manageable.
In July, the World Health Organization’s head of emergencies, Mike Ryan, criticised the speed with which some countries were preparing to reopen and suggested that low Covid-19 vaccination rates, combined with the lifting of restrictions, threatened a “toxic mixture” at a time when the WHO had just announced the “tragic milestone” of four million recorded Covid-19 fatalities.
Reopening is easy, but harder is the question of its sustainability, which many Southeast Asian countries are unlikely to achieve in coming months: they must ask if they have given sufficient vaccinations to warrant the “new normal” lifestyle.
As it struggles to enhance jab rates, the Thai government is rushing to halve its mandatory quarantine to seven days for fully vaccinated visitors starting next month and remove any isolation period for such travellers in 10 key provinces including Bangkok in November to help revive its tourism-dependent economy.
Tourism is finally waking up and travellers have started making their journeys. The problem is they haven’t come to Thailand, but other destinations that have lower infections, more vaccination rates and don’t have quarantine or Covid restrictions.
For instance, Malaysia, with more than 56% of its population having been fully vaccinated, reopened Langkawi — a cluster of 99 islands and the country’s prime holiday destination — to domestic tourists last week. Singapore last week opened the country for tourists from Germany and Brunei, without imposed quarantine.
The Thai government and others in this part of the world needs to tread carefully. The reality is the infection rate in this region — with a few exceptions such as the case of Singapore — remains high, despite the encouraging downward trajectory.
Johns Hopkins University data shows the Philippines is still reporting nearly 20,000 cases a day, with Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia all hovering around the 10,000-15,000 cases mark every 24 hours.
In many ways, Southeast Asia is doing little more than following in the footsteps of western nations which have already gone much further in loosening restrictions and returning freedoms to their citizens. Nevertheless, there is one key difference. In most of those countries, most people have been vaccinated. The figure currently stands at 65% in the United Kingdom, and nearly 70% in Canada.
That’s more than double the proportion of people on the streets of Thailand (26%) who are walking around having been doubled-jabbed with a certificate to prove it, despite nearly 51.5 million Covid-19 vaccinations having been given in the kingdom between Feb 28 and Sept 29.
Worries still abound over the types of vaccines being offered by the government with many parents cautious over giving consent for their offspring to receive Chinese-made vaccines. Some studies show that Sinovac is considerably less effective than both Pfizer and Moderna. Predictably perhaps, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has dismissed criticism of the country’s vaccines’ efficacy as a “bias-motivated smear”.
Despite criticism and uncertainly surrounding the country’s vaccination plan, the Prayut government does not have any choice left but to move towards a “new normal”. To be fair, it may be easy to criticise the regime over many points of policy or apparent fallibility, but it mustn’t be forgotten just what an interminably difficult period this has been for almost every administration in the world.
When cases rise, governments are labelled as weak and when cases are low, people notice their empty pockets that much more vocally. So, let’s hope October marks the start of a safe and swift revitalisation of the country for everyone’s sake.